Saint Paul Lê Văn Lộc

He was born in 1830 in An Nhơn, Tân Bình prefecture, the area that later became Sài Gòn. The parish priest of Chợ Quán took the boy Lộc in and raised him like his own son. Seeing something special in the boy, he sent him to the seminary at Cái Nhum.

In 1843, at thirteen, he was sent all the way to Penang, on the Malay Peninsula, to continue his studies. A boy from the South crossed the sea for the first time, lived among classmates from many countries, and studied Latin, philosophy and theology. He was seven years away from home.

In 1850 he came back. As a seminarian he taught catechism to people preparing for baptism and helped with the liturgy at Chợ Quán, the very place where he had grown up.

On February 7, 1857, he was ordained a priest at Lái Thiêu. The first task his superiors gave him was to look after the minor seminary at Thủ Đức.

Perhaps that was no accident. The boy others had raised was now trusted to raise other boys. He understood those seminarians better than anyone, because not long before he had been one of them.

But things grew more dangerous by the day. The minor seminary had to move to Thị Nghè and in the end was closed. In 1858 fighting broke out at Đà Nẵng, and the hunt for priests grew fiercer.

Father Lộc went into hiding around Sài Gòn and Gia Định. Even so, he found ways to care for his seminarians. They were scattered in different places, and the young teacher quietly sought out each one to teach him, encourage him and keep his vocation alive.

He was staying in the house of a former seminarian when a non-Christian woman spotted him and reported him. Soldiers surrounded the village and searched every house.

When they seized him, he admitted at once that he was a priest. Then he asked one thing: that no one around him be made to suffer for him. He would bear the blame alone.

The young priest was not worried about himself. He was worried about the former student who had sheltered him, the young man’s family and the neighbors.

On February 13, 1859, Father Lộc was executed at the Trường Thi execution ground in Sài Gòn. He was only twenty-nine and had been a priest for two years almost to the day.

The faithful carried his body back to Chợ Quán, the parish where he had grown up. Today his remains are venerated in the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Sài Gòn.

He was beatified on May 2, 1909, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is February 13.

Some priests serve fifty or sixty years. Father Lộc served two, yet his priesthood was complete: a boy raised by others grew up to raise other young people, and in the end came back to rest where he had been raised.

Anyone who steps into Notre-Dame Cathedral in Sài Gòn today can remember that young priest, and remember this too: behind every priest are people who quietly raised him, and every priest is called in turn to raise those who come after.